Baking Bloggers Unite! Some fave baking blogs

When first starting a blog sometimes the focus isn't always clear.  When I started my first blog five years ago it was a place for me to ramble, but in the past couple of years I have narrowed it down to my two loves: writing & baking. Many may start a blog as a personal outlet for self-publication, an e-journal, or just a kind of album of images and such. For many there is a focus and once we find it there's a niche. Many writers have their blogs dedicated to their struggles and successes in the craft. And then there are the bakers and chefs who dedicate their time/space to informing the public of hits and misses in regards to baked goodies. Now that my new website design is up and I have a designated baking page as well as a writing page I figured I'd spend this post giving props to fellow bakers out there with some amazing blogs/websites.

Via Twitter and through recommendations and searches I have found some cool baking focused blogs, as well as cooking blogs in general. And there are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of them on the web. I have to say Twitter has been a great resource to connect with other food enthusiasts. But bloggers themselves are often united in trying to spread the word about those they admire, influences, and things they just like.

So, here's a list (and summary) of some of these awesome baking sites (please note some sites do sweet and savory posts) that I've had the privilege to view, in no particular order.

• Gigi Cakes - Gigi Cakes was one of the first baking blogs I stumbled upon when I entered the Blogger realm. I had corresponded a bit with Gigi when I started my blog--and was directionless in terms of content--and she was very complimentary about my posts. Her blog is one of the ones that inspired my own and she introduced me to one of my favorite cookies: lemon poppy seed sugar cookies. She also has had giveaways of lovely treats and books for fans/followers. Gigi hasn't posted in a few months but her past posts are delicious and *currently drooling* lovely to look at. The best thing about blog posts for recipes is that they never get old!

• Let Her Bake Cake - I found this site through a friend's suggestion years ago. Hilary is a food blogger based in the UK and she redesigned her website to make it look nice & cohesive. Particularly I love her header a take on "Let them eat cake," a supposed quote from Marie Antoinette. Love, love it. Hilary's personality comes through in every post and her dedication to baking and baked goods is inspiring. The quality of her pictures and constant search to bring new information to readers is what makes her blog a must. She's on Twitter but doesn't post too regularly. Her blog is updated weekly or sometimes more often so definitely check it  out.

• Katrina's Kitchen - Another Twitter person I follow.  Katrina is a reader's choice mom food blogger so you know she knows her stuff. She makes some kick ass recipes. I love that she has a visual recipe index so you can see much of what she's made. It's not just reserved for baking but she has a lot of great baked goodies on there. My fave and something my husband now wants me to try is the chocolate chip Oreo cookie sandwich. As my husband said, that recipe is "gangsta"!

• Dessert Landscape - My friend created this site because she is all about dessert. We bonded over this and stuff. And she is picky, lemme tell you. So she is quite right in calling herself a dessertatarian. Dessert Landscape mainly focuses on desserts/sweets she's had around the world, not just in NYC. But believe me I have tried her baking and it is amazing! She's a pro and dedicated and focused and all that good stuff bakers should be. So I think you should definitely hit up her website and also ask for more posts.

• Cake Duchess - I just found Lora's site pre-Labor Day weekend via Twitter sidebar recommendations and man am I so glad I did. She's a pumpkin fanatic just as I am and had some tasty pumpkin recipes that I am currently salivating over (wiping keyboard now). She blogs pretty regularly, weekly if not twice a week, and has a variety of recipes to show. One I am pretty excited to try is nutella skillet brownies. Did you read that?! Let me repeat: NUTELLA. SKILLET. BROWNIES. The latest post I saw from Lora is from the International Food Bloggers Conference. Man, did I wish I could've gone to that!

• Flour on my Face - Another Twitter follower! I like the cleanness and ease of use of Arlene's site. A tab for recipes and another for older posts. Cute pics in the header and I enjoy participating in her regular foodie questions (this week's: What is your favorite Food Network show?). Her blog is not restricted to baking alone, so feel free to check out some of the savory items too. There's a lot of info on the sides, but if you take time to pick out the archives and popular recipes feed from FoodBuzz you'll see some key finds  in terms of food bloggers. A Parents magazine nominee for best food blog is a nice add-on too!

• Kitchen Karate - Jordan is one of the nicest bloggers you'll ever communicate with. He's currently seeking new baking challenges for his site so hit him up on his site or via Twitter! He's posted some classy, lovely stuff and in vibrant hues. (Rainbows!) I like the simplicity of his site's design, the color scheme, and also how he divvies up his recipes for easy search in his menu. All hail recipe indexes! Definitely check out his recipes for cookies and cream cupcakes because we've both made those. Like minds!

• Food to Heart - A lovely blog and fellow Twitter follower. Marynika has some amazing pictures. I am in awe of these bloggers and the intense pics capturing the great colors and stages in the cooking process. Her site is also easy to navigate and simple in design but definitely illustrates her message and captures what she loves: food! She even has hearts as icons! So cool and theme-y (yes, I made that word up, just now).

• Gingerbread Bagels - Again, a great design for the site, simple, nice use of pastel colors, easy to navigate, and a nice tagline. Awesome. She makes some nice recipes. One I am eying is the Twix Gooey Butter Cake. Butter and Cake and Gooey are all great words to have in the same sentence. Lindsey just had a bunch of giveaways for her one year blog-iversary! So nice and generous. People won cookbooks and doughnut pans (I lost that one dangit), and Peanut Butter Company's peanut butter. All great things for baking. Thanks for the generosity, Lindsey!

• Sweetapolita - Marynika suggested this blog to me as one of her faves. And I can see why. Rosie is an avid lover of food and beauty. She's a mom and an entrepreneur and is pursuing not only her love of cakes but of photography. And she has a penchant for pink it seems. She has a recipe index (must have!) and also offers a list of baking supplies she loves (uber helpful). After looking at some of her fancy cakes and confections you'll want one. And you're in luck! She takes orders. She's located outside of Toronto, CA but definitely email her for some of those decadent looking cakes. I'm currently craving the very-vanilla butter sponge cake.

So, that's just a taste of the wonderful baking/cooking blogs out there. I know I love viewing the luscious designs, pristine pics, and organization of their sites and it's definitely something I can learn from for the next web re-design (years in the making).  I'm up for more suggestions as to good baking bloggers and feel free to check out my baking page and suggested links. I'm already compiling notes for my annual year-end baking posts and look forward to more posts this and next year. Here's to great baking!

Wrap up! My year in baking...(Pt. 2)

And here are my remaining baking efforts for the year. The second half of the year brought a lot of use of my oven. Thankfully, it can take it. August:

The Dish: If it isn't already evident that I'm a lemon nut then here's more proof. My baked good for August was: Lemon Poppyseed Cake. Hell, I had left over lemons and, as mentioned, a whole lot of poppyseeds. Why not make bread?

End result: Also from Sweet Melissa's Cookbook, but I was not a fan of this one. Too tart and not sugary enough for me. Plus, I believe I left one loaf in a bit longer than necessary so it was a bit too crisp on the bottom. But, I brought it to work and people enjoyed it. I was told that the fact it was more lemony than sugary made it taste more like a traditional bread rather than cake. Go fig.

September:

The Dish: The previous month I had gone to Vermont for a Writer's Conference. My roomie at the conference went to a Maple shop and I implored her to get me maple sugar if she could find it. She did! (Thanks, Iris!) And so I made it a point to find something to use this decadent sugar for. And so I found a simple recipe, because I like simple, for Mapledoodles.

End result: For me, I think these cookies tasted better cool rather than warm. I got a metallic like taste from either the maple extract or the maple sugar. And lastly, too much maple! This recipe called for maple extract and maple sugar in the cookie along with maple sugar outside of the cookie and an (optional) maple glaze! I had to hold off from doing maple outside of the cookie because the taste was too darn strong! Decent enough cookies, but I've seen alternate mapledoodle recipes I'll try.

The Dish: In addition to the, somewhat disappointing, mapledoodles I made a classic fave: pumpkin chocolate chip cookies! My same friend who is a gifted baker introduced me to pumpkin chocolate chip bars, which are amazing! This is a take on that.

End result: These have a cakey texture rather than your normal cookie texture. And to eat these warm is amazing! The moist cakey-ness along with melty chocolate chips makes these to die for. It's filled with the same spices you'd use to make pumpkin pie as well as pumpkin filling and is amazing!

You'll fall in love with these and the recipe I use makes five dozen or more which is never enough! People in the office loved them and I found the adult mentors liked them too. Kids and teenagers may be a bit sketched out by pumpkin cookies, but once they try them they'll be reformed. I'm drooling just thinking about them.

October:

The Dish: Of course one would think that I'd save the pumpkin treats for October, but in all honest they're good any time! But this month I actually delved into a treat I've eaten a lot, but never had the cajones to make: pound cake!

Turns out it's super-easy!

End result: Main difference is that it is made with light brown sugar rather than regular granulated as per the recipe on the back of the Domino's sugar box. So it looks a bit darker as well. Tasted really good and familiar, almost like my grandma's!

Made it for my drinking group (hey ladies!) and they enjoyed it. Moistness keeps if sealed well for a couple of days, but definitely tastes best right out of the oven and with some accoutrements such as cream or berries.

The Dish: I also did a pumpkin recipe for Halloween! Last year I had an awful pumpkin bar recipe. The bars were incredibly dense and not sweet at all. Not happy. So I went with a Paula Deen recipe this year because, quite frankly, you can trust her butter-filled delicacies. And I wasn't disappointed!

End result: I just couldn't be bothered with icing and didn't want to deter from the pumpkin taste, so there you go. I have to say that this was more of a cake then a bar. It was mighty fluffy and could've used icing. It tasted fabulous and I'll make again instead calling it Ms. Deen's pumpkin cake!

November:

The Dish: And as the year comes full circle so does this month's dessert which was, well, lemon of course! This time lemon cupcakes with lemony cream on top. I made it for my department's first ever Dessert Hour before Thanksgiving and these cupcakes were a hit! If you're not a big dessert person lemon is excellent because it's not too strong and complements the sweet just right.

End result: These cupcakes are somewhat of a semi-homemade approach and you just do your own thing after using the cake mix. Lemon curd is the secret ingredient for these minicakes and it's really good. I have to say my main delight was in the lemony cream (heavy whipping cream, lemon curd, and confectioner's sugar that you beat the hell out of). I've made it again since I had left over ingredients and it was well received with some brown sugar bundt cake on Christmas. Also, used the lemony cream on a pumpkin tart with friends for Thanksgiving and everyone loved it! So it just goes to show that again...lemon shows its versatility!

The Dish: And lastly for the year of the pumpkin (and lemon) was pumpkin chocolate chip muffins from the same book I got the lemon cupcake recipe Cupcakes from the Cake (mix) Doctor by Anne Byrn It was hard for my husband to find a chocolate chip muffin mix, but when he did I went buck wild with left over pumpkin filling and enjoyed the results merrily.

End result: Pumpkin and chocolate is basically the best combination...ever. Just don't argue with me on this one. These muffins kept, when well sealed, and I brought some in for co-workers who are also pumpkin fanatics. Needless to say they loved them also.

December:

Well, another marathon baking month for moi this month.

The Dishes:

First up, Almond toffee crunch cookies from Cookies to Die for. Another hunt for me, but I found toffee bits! You put almond extract, chopped almonds (which I left out so my husband could eat the cookies), toffee bits, and your basic cookie ingredients to make this decadent type cookie.

End result: Well, the recipe said you could make five dozen and I stayed up making about eight or nine dozen. Almond extract has quite a particular taste so if you're a fan of that (or say almond croissants and such) then you'll enjoy these cookies immensely. They're soft and slightly crispy. The toffee sticks to your teeth, but that's the best part about toffee! I'll probably try these again and use vanilla extract instead of almond and see how much more you can taste the toffee.

Next up, peanut butter cookies (from scratch!) from the Sweet Melissa book. Another super easy recipe, hoorah! I added chocolate chips because I think most things with chocolate are awesome so I just keep adding. I made these for a friend's holiday cookie party when my original cookie dough went up in smoke or crumbles I should say.

End result: The recipe calls these chewy peanut butter cookies, but if you cook them a bit longer they become crunchy, which isn't a bad thing really. I've gotten them in the middle for the past two times I've made them. Very enjoyable and I have the ingredients at home so I'll make these again and again.

And then there were maple chocolate chip cookies! This was the basic chocolate chip cookie recipe (courtesy of Hershey's) and instead of brown sugar I added in maple sugar and a smidge of maple extract.

End result: Again, better the next day. I dunno if it's the maple extract or sugar but right out of the oven there's a bit of a metallic taste. However, the next day when cool (and super chewy) these cookies tasted awesome with a hint of maple. Co-workers loved this holiday treat!

And for me that's it for the year in baking. I look forward to the new year and new recipes and experiments in the kitchen.

Happy Holidays and Happy Baking!

Wrap up! My year in baking... (Pt. 1)

I enjoy baking and cooking. Baking more so because of the fact that I actually seem to be good at it and things turn out the way they're supposed to (most of the time). I can't always say the same for savory or meat dishes in my hands. Since I started my current job I found I was surrounded by people who enjoyed baking and even more so enjoyed eating what someone else baked. It only seemed fair that I participate in the activities since I enjoyed their offerings. I usually only baked for the holidays (cheap gifts!) and to say "thank you" for donating to a special cause (hundreds raised for AIDS Walk and rewarded by cupcakes!) And so within the past year my baking efforts have quadrupled. I bake new recipes regularly and am happy to offer my services for others including my current mentoring group.

Many of my baking successes have been posted to my Facebook album page, but I wanted to also include them here because, well, I like y'alls.

I present...my baking efforts of 2009!

January:

The Dish: For my cupcake-themed birthday party I made lemon-raspberry cupcakes and my husband contributed red velvet cupcakes with a cinnamon buttercream icing. Both were well regarded at the party. I first made the lemon-raspberry cupcakes for my mom and mother-in-law on Mother's Day in 2008, I made them again to say "thanks for donating to AIDS Walk in my name" that same year, and then again this year.

This recipe is from Bon Appetit magazine. And thus far my husband and I have not been let down by the recipes we've tried in there.

End result: I'm a lemon lover so this is a great treat. You use lemon zest and fresh lemon juice in the cupcake so that it has a light (not overpowering) lemony taste. In addition you put in a teaspoon scoop of raspberry jelly inside as a nice treat and top it all off with an intensely sugary lemon icing (lemon juice, confectioners sugar; add some jam if you want to make it pink).

Voila...you have lemon goodness! Party-goers enjoyed this treat a lot and many raved about it even against the well loved red velvet.

April:

I will say not much went down during the winter months baking wise.

The Dish: Lemon strikes again! In cookie form this time. Lemon Poppyseed Cookies have become a staple for me this year. The people love 'em, and I have to give the people what they want. And since I have a crap load of poppyseed's I might as well make these treats as often as possible.

End result: The lemon comes from, again, lemon zest! Which is amazing in every sense of the word. You can't add too much so don't be afraid to add more than the recipe dictates.

Did I mention people love these cookies? I most recently made them for my department's book club and these things were ravaged. A co-worker even said she was introduced to a flavor she didn't know she liked. That's right, baking causes miracles!

May:

My oven started getting heavy use when NY AIDS Walk came around and I was basically pimping my baking skills for donations. And dagnabbit it worked! Even during a recession I was able to raise several hundred dollars for the cause. Heck yeah!

Requests were varied and some people just got some of what I made others. But let me tell you it was a baking bonanza for a good couple weeks.

There were brownies, yawn. But then I made cupcakes!

The Dishes:

1) Carrot cake cupcakes with cream cheese icing. I skimped on the icing and bought some whipped. After spending almost an hour zesting (not smart on my part) 2 cups of carrots I was tired and it was late on a school night no less.

End result: Those who donated enjoyed this treat as well. Though, I felt it tasted more like a muffin than a cupcake. Moist and good and all but light on the sugar taste. So perhaps it's better for you?

2) Coconut cupcakes with cream cheese icing: Since I had left over icing from the carrot cake cupcakes you know where it went. This recipe was interesting because it called for coconut flakes in and on top of the cupcake as well as coconut extract. But, in a war of extracts the vanilla won because I tasted that more than the coconut. And toasting the coconut then sprinkling it on top gave off a nice effect I think.

End result: My donator who is a coconut lover really enjoyed this cupcake. So I'm pretty sure he'll be donating again next year.

June:

The Dish: May was also busy in that I went to Book Expo of America and don't think I didn't go about trying to get as many cookbooks (books in general) as I could. I did snag Cookies to Die For by Bev Shaffer and found one of the easiest recipes to make and went for it: Maple Butter Cookies. One thing to note is that you have to refrigerate the dough after making so it's a day affair to make these cookies.

End result: Unfortunately the supermarkets nearest me don't have the best brands of maple syrup that was called for in this recipe. So I don't think the maple taste was as heavy as it should be. But the public enjoyed. Personally, I think they're biased by butter, which I am as well.

The Dish: I also made Blondies for the first time. Not realizing how easy it is to make these things these have now become a staple when visiting people. Need me to bring something? Heck, I'll make blondies! Anyone probably has the ingredients for these in their home: flour, butter, brown sugar, salt, vanilla extract, and perhaps chocolate chips. There you know the recipe, now go out there and bake!

End result: I've made these three times this year because they're so easy. If you're nervous about blondies don't be. It's basically a chocolate chip cookie in bar form. Sounds delicious right? My co-workers thought so and so I'll continue to make them.

July:

My husband and I had visited Sweet Melissa Patisserie in Brooklyn a little while earlier and I tried her pumpkin bread pudding, which I liked. So when I found out she had a book and additionally saw her win a decorating competition on FoodNetwork I knew I had to get her recipes! She had pumpkin recipes for crying out loud!

The Dish: And so, with book in hand, I made Snickerdoodles. A friend first introduced me to this and she is also a phenomenal baker. Hers are quite moist, these are moist but a bit firmer.

End result: Pretty easy to make and I've had requests for these. I made some for a friend's birthday party and even though the cookies were still a bit warm in the dense humidity of July the three or four dozen cookies I bought were ravished within the first 30 minutes I set them down. Someone asked if this was a family recipe and I had to give credit where it was due. Thanks, Melissa!

The remainder of the year to be summed up in the next post...